Network environments enable making large quantities of information available to network members using a viewer application, such as a web browser, for example. Typically, there is a one-way transfer of information from a web page to a group of web page readers. Modifying the information in a web page requires that a web page author edit the content which defines aspects of the web page, such as hypertext markup language (“HTML”). Several systems are available for modifying web page content. Some of these systems present a page author with an editing interface on a web browser from which the web page content can be modified. Upon completing the modifications, the modified web page content is stored at a web server, for instance, so the updated page can be accessed by network members.
In a collaborative work environment, users besides the page author may also desire modifying the web pages. But, as mentioned above, web pages typically are modified by one author who has access to the web Page content, which may be stored at a web server. The “Sparrow” system described in a publication entitled “In-Place Editing of Web Pages: Sparrow Community-Shared Documents,” Bay-Wei Chang, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, Calif. 94304, U.S.A., April 1998, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, allows a shared web page to be modified or augmented by any contributor, hereinafter referred to as a “group-editable web page.” Specifically, group-editable web pages allow users to contribute to a web page in ways the page author has defined.
Traditional Web pages can be converted into group-editable web pages by adding several additional strings of HTML syntax. The additional strings of syntax include a set of templates and a set of data contributions or items. The templates describe what data contributions the page may include, such as the number and kinds of data fields, and how those contributions will be formatted. An item is a single contribution, formatted according to the rules in one of the templates. Contributors can add new contributions, or edit previous contributions, by filling in forms where these forms require no previous knowledge of HTML. With group-editable web pages, the page author can change the layout of such a page or the format of its items.
While group-editable web pages create a user-friendly and flexible environment that enables users in a collaborative environment to easily contribute and make changes to the content in the pages, there are some limitations. First, editing the formatting information in traditional or group-editable web pages can be difficult. In group-editable web pages, the formatting information is often stored directly in the page, requiring that the information in each page be modified manually by a copy/paste operation. This method is time consuming and prone to error. One way to deal with this problem includes storing a single copy of the formatting information in a separate database, updating the single copy, and then dynamically creating web pages using that formatting information in the pages as they are generated and displayed. This approach works, but inhibits the ability to easily copy a page since the formatting information and content are not in a single file.
Second, deleting, copying, moving and/or replacing content in traditional web pages and particularly in group-editable pages can be difficult and tedious if it is done using copy/paste operations. Customized programs could be written for each group-editable web page to support single-click copying, moving, replacing, and deletion of material, but this approach is labor intensive. As a result, there has been no easy way of enabling content to be deleted, copied, moved and/or replaced in group-editable web pages especially where it is desired that the content used for replacing other content or the content being copied or moved acquires the formatting characteristics of the destination pages where the content is being placed.